What kind of wood is best for your new “green” sofa?

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From last week’s post, I explained that most people who want to buy a “green” sofa look at two major components: the wood and the foam. But our blog post demonstrated how your fabric choice can trump the embodied energy of both these components – in other words, depending on which fiber you choose, fabric can be almost triple the embodied energy of wood and foam combined. But embodied energy is a complicated concept, and difficult to figure out without lots of time on your hands. Our next steps will be to examine other issues associated with each of these choices – remember the ecosystem is a vast interconnected network, and we can’t pull any one component out and evaluate it out of context. Each week we’ll look at one of the components – this week it’s wood.

Everybody knows that wood, a natural product, comes from trees, but it’s important to know much more than whether the wood is cherry or mahagony – it’s also important to know that the wood did not come from an endangered forest (such as a tropical forest, or old growth boreal forests) – and preferably that the wood came from a forest that is sustainably managed. Well managed forests provide clean water, homes for wildlife, and they help stabilize the climate. As the National Resources Defense Council says:

“Forests are more than a symbolic ideal of wilderness, more than quiet places to enjoy nature. Forest ecosystems — trees, soil, undergrowth, all living things in a forest — are critical to maintaining life on earth. Forests help us breathe by creating oxygen and filtering pollutants from the air, and help stabilize the global climate by absorbing carbon dioxide, the main greenhouse gas. They soak up rainfall like giant sponges, preventing floods and purifying water that we drink. They provide habitat for 90 percent of the plant and animal species that live on land, as well as homelands for many of the earth’s last remaining indigenous cultures. Forests are commercially important, too; they yield valuable resources like wood, rubber and medicinal plants, including plants used to create cancer drugs. Harvesting these resources provides employment for local communities. Healthy forests are a critical part of the web of life. Protecting the earth’s remaining forest cover is now an urgent task.”

Unsustainable logging, agricultural expansion, and other practices threaten many forests’ existence. Indeed, half of the Earth’s original forest cover has been lost, mostly in the last three decades.

According to the World Resources Institute (WRI), only 20% of Earth’s original forests remain today in areas large enough to maintain their full complement of biological and habitat diversity and ecological functions.[2]

More than 20% of worldwide carbon emissions come from the loss of forests[1], even after counting all the carbon captured by forest growth.

A sustainable forest is a forest that is carefully managed so that as trees are felled they are replaced with seedlings that eventually grow into mature trees. This is a carefully and skilfully managed system. The forest is a working environment, producing wood products such as wood pulp for the paper / card industry and wood based materials for furniture manufacture and the construction industry. Great care is taken to ensure the safety of wildlife and to preserve the natural environment.

Forest certification is like organic labeling for forest products: it is intended as a seal of approval — a means of notifying consumers that a wood or paper product comes from forests managed in accordance with strict environmental and social standards. For example, a person shopping for flooring or furniture would seek a certified forest product to be sure that the wood was harvested in a sustainable manner from a healthy forest, and not clearcut from a tropical rainforest or the ancestral homelands of forest-dependent indigenous people.

Choosing products from forests certified by the independent Forest Stewardship Council (FSC) can be an important part of using wood and paper more sustainably. The FSC, based in Bonn, Germany, brought together three seemingly antagonistic groups: environmentalists, industrialists and social activists. Its mission and governance reflects the balance between these original constituents in that FSC seeks to promote environmentally appropriate, socially beneficial and economically viable management of the world’s forests. Each is given equal weight. Formed in 1993, the FSC has established a set of international forest management standards; it also accredits and monitors certification organizations that evaluate on-the-ground compliance with these standards in forests around the world. Today nearly 125 million acres of forest are FSC certified in 76 countries.

The most well known of these alternative certifications is the Sustainable Forestry Initiative (SFI). Created in 1995 by the American Forest & Paper Association (AF&PA), an industry group, SFI was originally created as a public relations program, but it now represents itself as a certification system.

There are significant differences between the two systems. FSC’s conservation standards tend to be more concrete, while SFI’s are vaguer targets with fewer measurable requirements. Here is what is allowed under the SFI standard:

Allows large clearcuts

Allows use of toxic chemicals

Allows conversion of old-growth forests to tree plantations

Allows use of genetically modified trees

Allows logging close to rivers and streams that harms water supplies

By comparison, the FSC:

Establishes meaningful limits on large-scale clearcutting; harvesting rates and clearing sizes can not exceed a forest’s natural capacity to regenerate.

Prohibits the most toxic chemicals and encourages forest practices that reduce chemical use.

Does not allow the conversion of old-growth forests to tree plantations, and has guidelines for environmental management of existing plantations.

Prohibits use of genetically modified trees and other genetically modified organisms (GMOs).

Requires management and monitoring of natural forest attributes, including the water supply; for example, springs and streams are monitored to detect any signs of pollutants or vegetative disturbance.

Requires protection measures for rare old growth in certified forests, and consistently requires protection of other high conservation value forests.

Prohibits replacement of forests by sprawl and other non-forest land uses.[4]

Certifiers also grant “chain-of-custody” certifications to companies that manufacture and sell products made out of certified wood. A chain-of-custody assessment tracks wood from the forest through milling and manufacturing to the point of sale. This annual assessment ensures that products sold as certified actually originate in certified forests.

Nearly a decade and a half after the establishment of these two certification bodies, there is a battle between FSC and SFI which is crescendoing in a showdown over recognition in the LEED system, the preeminent green building standard in the U.S. Since its inception in 2000, LEED (Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design) has recognized only lumber with the FSC label as responsibly sourced. Up until now, credits such as MR 7 – Certified Wood, has awarded points based on the usage of FSC certified wood only (NOTE: this is not specific to wood; LEED only awards points automatically for Indoor Air Quality to products which are GreenGuard certified) . Intense timber industry pressure has led the U.S. Green Building Council (USGBC), LEED’s parent, to evaluate the certified wood credit in LEED, which has been FSC exclusive since inception, and determine whether other certification systems, such as the industry-driven Sustainable Forestry Initiative, should be given credits as well. As a result, the USGBC is currently writing new rules about wood-product sourcing.

This would replace the simple FSC monopoly with generalized benchmarks for evaluating systems claiming to enforce sustainable forestry and open up considerations for other “green” wood labeling systems.

Opponents of this action feel that it opens the door to destructive forestry practices under the guise of “green” – and to pass off status-quo business practices as environmentally friendly. One of the leading arguments for loosening the wood credit — and thus lowering the bar for the standards governing the origins of the wood — is that the FSC system doesn’t have enough supply to meet demand. To which the rejoinder is that the volume of SFI wood speaks to laxness of standards. SFI contends that since only 10% of the world’s forests are certified sustainable, the important fact to concern us should be to work on the problems plaguing the remaining 90%.

The battle is heating up: it was reported as recently as the 22nd of December, 2009, that a law suit was filed on behalf of a group calling itself the “Coalition for Fair Forest Certification” against the Forest Stewardship Council (FSC) alleging unfair and deceptive trade practices. It is believed that the Coalition members are also members of the Sustainable Forestry Initiative. (see http://greensource.construction.com/news/2009/091222Deception.asp )

We can only hope that USGBC’s certification decision takes place with keen regard to the organization’s guiding principles — high-minded values like “reconciling humanity with nature” and “fostering social equity.” It’s a critical decision that has the potential to help preserve forests by providing incentives for great management and cooling the planet down at the same time.

Once you’ve established whether the wood is from a sustainably managed forest, it’s also important to note whether the wood products in the sofa are composites. Composites are typically made of wood and adhesive – examples of such composites are laminated veneer lumber (LVL), Medium density fiberboard (MDF), Plywood, and Glue Laminated Beams (Glulam). Because these products are glued together using phenol formaldehyde resins, there is concern with formaldehyde emissions. In fact, a bill introduced in September, 2009, in the U.S. Senate would limit the amount of allowable formaldehyde emissions in composite wood products. In addition, the embodied energy in these products is typically higher than that for solid timber. Based on a study done by the School of Engineering, University of Plymouth in the United Kingdom,the embodied energy in air dried sawn hardwood (0.5 MJ/kg) is considerably less than that of glulam (4.6 to 11.0 MJ/kg)

The FSC is not a perfect organization, nor is it a perfect measure of ecoprotection. But I believe it is an order of magnitude better than any other certification on the market. It has procedures (such as dispute resolution) in place to address the kinds of issues which FSC Watch identifies. I took a keen look at the FSC Watch web site and one of the things that struck me was the absence of accountability – in other words, other than naming three people, we have no idea who is sponsoring this web site. FSC on the other hand is transparent, including its funding sources. But FSC Watch is not the only voice to point out problems within the FSC; Friends of the Earth Australia also had some scathing things to say about them (http://www.foe.org.au/resources/chain-reaction/editions/105/problems-with-the-forest-stewardship-council). Yet the FSC remains the certification body that supports the best forestry management practices. SFI, on the other hand, is certifying the worst logging practices in North America. It is a tough thing to leverage change in ways such that it will actually happen – FSC is one such organization that is making the attempt and though there are certainly slip us, is remaining true to its vision.

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Two Sisters on a Mission.

Patty and Leigh Anne founded this company to make the whole world safer while making our personal environments more beautiful.

After forming O Ecotextiles in 2004, they began a world-wide search for manufacturing partners interested in a cradle-to-cradle process of creating no-impact, perfectly safe, incredibly luxurious fabrics.

They began working with people around the world: Romanian farmers who dew- or field-ret hemp stalks; a Japanese mill owner committed to “green” processes, even new methods such as using ozone to bleach fabric; a 100-year-old Italian mill that produces no wastewater; a Chilean mill shifting to entirely green processes; an Italian dye house that produces biodegradable, heavy-metal free textiles.